Photo by Lea Böhm on Unsplash. For Day 2 of the November Poem A Day Challenge. A Poem for when the unexpected triggers memories of home. ** It hangs heavy on the heart, its heft never ever far away it seems, always lurking, always waiting always ready to spring to life to the lines of a song suddenly borne on the wind, or the whiff of mothballs, unlocking the memory of the gathering, and of ritual. ...
For the November Poem-A-Day challenge. A poem about Entering, but mainly about leaving… ** On the days when I wake to a haze hiding the lushness of the valley below, its shadow hanging heavy like a shroud on limbs shrivelled by the ravages of time, I ponder the bland bleakness of air heavy with water, how it smothers life, and the beauty of things. Each day where the light yields ...
For The Sunday Muse Prompt # 128: ** When Neil and Buzz reached the top of the world their feet ensconced in the very dust from whence they came they left in awe at the fragility of things, at how the pale blue dot they left behind hung as though by an invisible thread, shimmering with the ethereal beauty of the light lent it by the sun. Butterflies fluttered on their insides, their hearts ...
Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash ** For all my flirtation with being prodigal, I have never quite managed to untether myself from the Pentecostal faith tradition, especially the hand-clapping, foot-stomping, tongue-blasting, frenzied version that is your typical Nigerian church. There have been times I have felt right at home in a subset of it - my Eket days, and latterly, my sojourn in the ‘Deen come to mind - but for the most part, it has always felt designed for the loud and the intense, to the detriment (and inadvertent?) exclusion of those of us who live on the more introspective side of the spectrum. Not being blessed with the gift of nimble footwork, or being particularly willing to apply myself to acquire the skills involved if I’m being honest, Thanksgiving Sundays in that tradition were a veritable minefield, partaken in with the threat of being stuck behind an overly expressive dancer an ever-present danger. ...
For The Sunday Muse Prompt #124: ** The King surveys his realm, from his perch high atop a dry, wizened tree. This is what freedom is, to roam without a care and be one with the earth.
For The Sunday Muse prompt #122: ** We have carried our bodies to a far country, the weight of the burden of the duty of sons driving us like a ship heave-hoing in a stormy gale to the place where our kin were brought before. Each day we toil amongst the living to save the ones we hurt by leaving, the labour of our bent backs a libation poured on dry earth, to appease the spirits of the old ones. This is our penance, a prayer sung to the tune of the songs handed down. ...
For The Sunday Muse prompt #121. After Emily Dickinson. ** Hope is the thing that shimmers in the distance the faint light flickering in the brooding stillness of the afternoon heat, the persistent promise that this thirst, this longing for restoring will be sated by rain. It is the pulse quickening with the lengthening shadows of evening and the return of familiar sights to the eyes. It is home calling the lost son to return to the dangerous duty of tending.
For The Sunday Muse prompt #118: ** In the chaos of water meeting water and breaking free, each splash a hop of joy freed to twirl and twist and kick and be, a body bent fluidly flowing like a shout of delirious joy, life echoes.
For The Sunday Muse Prompt #116. Image “Seeing Black & White” photography by Susie Clevenger ** Yesterday’s ghouls are slowly disappearing, fading like the night light once bright but now dappled, wisps of grey carried away in our slipstream, lingering like the dust a knight’s steed leaves in the frenzy of flight. But the promise is a mirage, objects in a mirror are closer than they appear and though we run as though the wind bears us, yesterday’s shadow lurks in the space between the things we leave and the things that disappear
Last day, Yay!!! The prompt for today as this season of NaPoWriMo comes to an end is to write a poem about something that returns. Photo by Zane Lee on Unsplash \\\* The songs the birds bring each spring remind us of the stirring of life, darkness yielding to the lengthening light and cherry blossoms blooming again. Hope is the thing that birds bring that after death comes life, and rebirth.